About New York; Squeegee Men, Still Around, Still Relentless

By DAN BARRY

Published: June 24, 2006

THE intersection of West 41st Street and Dyer Avenue ranks among the least attractive corners of Manhattan, all bus exhaust and Lincoln Tunnel traffic. The surrounding concrete-and-fencing motif creates a sense of temporary incarceration, with only a sluggish green light to grant parole.

Lingering there Thursday were those simply trying to make a buck. The forklift operator unloading watermelon with balletic turns at the back of Stiles Farmers Market. The construction worker dabbing his trowel like a paintbrush on a canvas of wet cement. And the two men wielding a different kind of utensil with similar aesthetic intent: a squeegee.

''There's an art to it,'' one of the men, Rodney, confided as a green light liberated potential customers. ''The faster you are wiping the soap and water off the window, the gooder you are. The fastest can get two or three a light.''

He and his partner, Timothy, referred to themselves as window washers, which might offend those who risk their lives for the viewing pleasure of penthouse dwellers. They both claimed to have been practicing their craft since 1980, which, if true, would entitle them to some kind of squeegee pension, if not a city proclamation for audacious endurance.

Squeegee men? How, how, so last century. It was as if they were unaware of their own extinction: a dodo's fate that began more than a decade ago with the eradication efforts of an annoyed Mayor David N. Dinkins and then a zealous Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who somehow made them the symbol of a city slouching toward ruin.

Few recall them fondly (squeegee men, that is, not necessarily former mayors). At red lights they violated the space of your Ford or Toyota, slapped gray water on the windshield, interpreted frantic pantomimes of ''No, no'' to mean ''More, more,'' wiped away most of the gray and then waited for the pressed buttons of undefined guilt to eject a dollar through a side window's slit.

They were the city's unofficial greeters, standing at its portals with squeegees for flags and buckets of dirty water for confetti -- until, suddenly, they vanished, dispersed by persistent policing of what the city's administrative code calls ''certain forms of aggressive solicitation.'' One or two practitioners resurfaced a few years ago, just long enough to stir some silliness that their presence signaled a crime spike, a lax City Hall, Armageddon.

Amazement, then, rather than nostalgia, prompted a noontime pause to watch Rodney and Timothy in the execution of their rounds. Their retro street theater included acts of traffic-dodging contortion, clownish spills of water and facial expressions that ranged from puppy dog to attack dog.

THE light turned red and he hustled out to splash soapy-soupy water onto the windshield of a cherry-red sport utility vehicle. His efforts prompted a series of crazed hand gestures within the car that perhaps he interpreted as applause.

Moments later there came fluttering from a side window a small flag of surrender the color of green.

Then Rodney, as brawny as Timothy is thin, took his turn with a gray Honda, only to come away with a sulk suggesting that the driver had failed humankind. ''If they say no, don't do it,'' he advised. ''You know what? There's more than one car.''

Soon a white S.U.V. with New Jersey plates found itself being blessed with New York water by Pastor Rodney. ''A buck for good luck,'' he said, smiling, as the driver pulled away, not.

Rodney and Timothy both reeked of something potent, perhaps an especially bad batch of Old Spice. Now Timothy, swaying slightly, was standing in the middle of Dyer Avenue, directing the traffic that raced desperately to avoid a red light and thus his squeegee.

A blue Grand Cherokee lost the race, and Timothy tried to soothe it with strokes of his slobbering squeegee. The driver, though, wanted no part of Timothy's cheap comfort and told him so with gesture and word.

Soon, though, he was washing another car's window, oblivious to the green light and the sounding of horns. That was when Rodney ran over to help finish the job. ''That's called teamwork,'' said Rodney.

For each window sullied and unsullied, these squeegee throwbacks received one dollar: way too much and yet not enough, it is a toll collected at the intersection.